In the south aisle of St Andrew’s Church opposite St Andrew’s Hall in Norwich are two panels of medieval stained glass. The left panel is fragments of glass collected in a patchwork, the right panel depicts the Dance of Death and shows a bishop somewhat coyly dancing with a skeleton in a winding cloth.
The window is believed to be the only surviving example of this theme in England and shows a skeleton leading a bishop towards death, possibly reflecting the late medieval preoccupation with the possibility of sudden death, apt during plague-ridden times.
St Andrew’s is full of treats to spot, including lots of gorgeous memento mori in the Suckling Chapel which commemorates a major Norfolk family who were forebears of Horatio Nelson (look out for the skulls mounted on a rotting fruit and flower cages), great carved bench ends and John Suckling and wife Martha’s tomb with their daughters underneath looking like Elizabethan Daleks queuing for a bus.
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